In recent years, there has been a growing demand for light-sensitive silver halide photographic materials capable of being rapidly processed to form high-quality images.
The processing of light-sensitive silver halide photographic materials is usually performed continuously in the automatic processor that is installed in each photo-finishing laboratory, but for the improvement of photo-finishing service to customers, the processing of the accepted light-sensitive materials and return of photo-finished prints therefrom to customers within the day the light-sensitive materials were accepted has been required, and further, in nowadays, even quicker return of them in the order of several hours to customers has now been required. Also from the standpoint that to shorten the processing time is to improve the productivity, enabling the reduction in cost, the development of rapid processing is urgently needed.
To accomplish the rapid processing, an approach thereto is made from both aspects of light-sensitive materials and processing solutions. As for color development, attempts have been made to use a high temperature, a high pH and a high color developing agent concentration, and further the addition of additives such as a development accelerator and the like is also known. Examples of the development accelerator include the 1-phenyl-3-pyrazolidone as described in British Patent No. 811,185, the N-methyl-p-aminophenol as described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,417,514, the N,N,N',N'-tetramethyl-p-phenylenediamine as described in Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter referred to as Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication) No. 15554/1975, and the like. However, these methods are unable to accomplish any sufficient processing rapidity and liable to deteriorate light-sensitive materials' characteristics in such a way as increasing their fog.
On the other hand, it is well-known that the configuration, size and composition of the silver halide grain of a silver halide emulsion to be used in a light-sensitive material largely affect the developing speed, and particularly the silver halide composition is significant--a significantly high developing speed is obtained particularly when a high chloride-containing silver halide is used.
A light-sensitive material is produced generally through the preparation of its emulsion of a silver halide dispersed in an aqueous gelatin solution in the manufacturing process. The aqueous gelatin solution is known to be decomposed or rotten by being subjected to the action of bacteria, mold or the like. For example, in the manufacture of a photographic material, an aqueous gelatin solution containing photographic raw component materials, if allowed to stand in the gel or sol condition for a long period of time, becomes rotten or decomposed, leading to lowering its viscosity when used as a coating liquid, deteriorating the physical strength of the coated layer and bringing a coating trouble (e.g., comets) which is considered due to the decomposed product. These drawbacks have become serious problems in the rapid coating particularly for the mass production in recent years.
For the purpose of restraining such the rottenness or decomposition by bacteria, mold, etc., in a gelatin solution, various fungicides have been disclosed such as those in Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication Nos. 27424/1979, 157244/1982, 84237/1984, 226344/1984, 263938/1985, 233743/1986, and the like.
We further investigated the problem by the application of various fungicides disclosed in the above publications to a silver halide light-sensitive material comprising a high silver chloride-content silver halide. As a result, it has become apparent that, as compared to silver chlorobromide-type conventional ones, the light-sensitive material is significant in the fog density increase as well as in the desensitization, and in addition, when processed continually over a long period, tends to show a significant desensitization and fog increase considered due to the fungicide dissolved out into its processing solution.
As a result of our various investigations for solving the above problem, it has now been found that by adding a certain restraining compound further to the above fungicide-added system, the fog density can be restrained and the sensitivity decline can be lessened without adversely affecting the processing rapidity, fungicidal effect, and the like, and thus the present invention has been completed.